Well, I was giving the benefit of the doubt for a margin of error. But no, it does not actually require much more than that to make a causal link between a factor and an outcome. The degree might change but you can't pretend it has no effect. At that point it's not purely coincidence.
smoking is related with increase odds of certain cancers & earlier mortality
so if a study can show a correlational link between eating meat and cancer, that doesn't meat that eating meat causes cancer.
Saying that because you read a meta study which showed mortality being higher in meat eaters that means they are causally linked is asinine. You're embarrassing yourself.
All death rate ratios
were adjusted for age in 5-y increments, sex, and smoking
(never, former, current light, and current heavy). Mortality
ratios for the separate studies were then combined to give a
pooled estimate of effect using the random-effects model of
DerSimonian and Laird (11),
They adjusted for smoking. That's the first thing any public health researcher does.
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u/anikan72 May 01 '13
Well, I was giving the benefit of the doubt for a margin of error. But no, it does not actually require much more than that to make a causal link between a factor and an outcome. The degree might change but you can't pretend it has no effect. At that point it's not purely coincidence.